“With a vanilla neural network you take a set of input data, pass it through the network, and get a set of outputs,” explains Thoutt.

In order to train these models you need to know what the model should ideally output, which is often called your labels or target variables. The neural network compares the data it outputs with the targets and updates the network learns to better mimic the targets.”

In this instance, Thoutt fed the AI every single previous book from the series, it then taught the AI not to repeat itself which in turn meant that the AI should be able to comfortably move the plot along.

Thoutt has already published the first five chapters to GitHub and so we can already give a rough idea of how it’s getting along.

If you were optimistically hoping that this is the AI version of a monkey writing Shakespeare then we’re in for some bad news. It’s almost complete gibberish.

“I feared Master Sansa, Ser,” Ser Jaime reminded her. “She Baratheon is one of the crossing. The second sons of your onion concubine.”

Lady Donella length of a longsword, the hair that went ready to climb side from her. And all between them were belaquo bonebreaker and the night’s watch ride in their room. Only he could not look at them, even others sure. “How could you leave the world?”

“Some must, for you,” a woman’s voiced up lazily. “Gods, Reek.”

Gods reek indeed.

So while it’s not exactly the conclusion we were hoping for, Zack’s small experiment has shown that we are, slowly but surely, heading towards a world where someday AI could write a literary classic.